Hughes coasts through, content to turn dogtheives into a couple of Home Alone robbers, as he continues to do with various Home Alone sequels and the remake of the Absent Minded Professor, known as Flubber. Charm, wit and common sense get thrown out the window in favor of slapstick and pratfalls that are painfully unfunny. The two leads (Jeff Daniels and Joely Richardson) lack the chemistry that their animal costars have and Glenn Close, while the best thing in the movie, is reduced to recreating a cartoon. A cartoon! She can't make her mark on the character; she's limited to looking, acting and sounding like her animated counterpart.

The animals, while cute, can't talk as they did in the animated feature. What a shame. What they would've been able to say would have been far more interesting.